Nightmare ThEVAtre
by Warriorsong
Summary: REVERSIONED. Originally something entirely different, remade into a surreal, nightmarish Evangelion montage. Examines character fears.


NIGHTMARE THEATRE ACT 1

**Nightmare Theatre**

A Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction

By Nicholas Paul Clark (Warriorsong)

This ones a bit of a stretch so keep an open mind…

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Dream Scene I

Failure

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He can feel the impulses and perceptions wash over him. He knows the immediate past and the deep past but how he got here is a mystery. The elevator creeps upward, slowly, it seeming to move slower than the beating of his heart.

He knows he is late for work. He is well aware of that fact, it's screaming around in his head like a three-year-old with a sugar high. He is mentally kicking himself; it's his first day here, a new job, a new chance, a way out of the drudge that your life was, the obligation to everyone but himself. Here he can be his own man, something he never thought possible.

It would fit, ironically, he always woke early, but why now, why today, the one day that matters, the one chance, did he have to sleep in?

A chance to make it better, his life, prove wrong the father that thinks so little of him that all he does is insult and degrade him (and that's even if he speaks to him at all), laughing at his triumphs as if they mean nothing.

Is the chance gone now that he's messed up? One more screw-up in a string of screw-ups stretching behind him from the waking moment of this morning to the time he was born?

Slowly, like the inevitable dawn, the elevator doors pull back, opening, the mouth to either salvation or damnation.

He takes the step into the future, a defining event, the one step from elevator to office threshold. Prayers die on his lips as he turns to see the figure coming towards him, indistinguishable, not much larger than him but enough to eradicate light.

The pose and bearing indicate that the worst fears that he nurtured in the slow elevator ride, but he can sense they are just are but the tip of a hellish iceberg.

The words are not some much heard, as their meaning is thrown directly into his subconscious mind. You're fired. Not the sort of behaviour we expect. Many start as they mean to continue. Ended even before its begins.

Reality stretches, the floor bending inward and he spins around, the faint dinging of the elevator ascending the floors, coming for you, bearing its passenger.

The chime, harsh and echoing sounds as the figure steps forth, glaring, baleful eyes behind their yellow lenses glowing as they bore into you with a heat that could smelt metal.

And again, into his mind the concentrated emotions pour, that he is useless, will amount to nothing, are a disappointment and always have been, that he is a waste of a life, that he never did and never will gain the respect he so desperately craves, let alone the love he feels starved of...

And then the sound crashes like a wave against the shore of his existence, the laughter. The office, all its workers, laughing, laughing at him, and he is stripped bare, fears and feelings open for all to see and the depression beneath his feet sinks deeper as the walls of the office and the reality its holds stretch back, people appearing as he spins, spins in a circle so fast that the images and sights blur into a muddy tan in his field of vision.

And it slows and he stops.

Looking around he sees the extent of people, a multitude and as he slowly turns, the field of faces stretches throughout and continuous, swallowing the universe with their open mouths, chill mocking laughter striking him like the worst pain imaginable.

He doesn't need to count, the numbers are in his head and he knows who these people are. They are the world and they, all five billion people, are laughing at him. For his failure.

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Dream Scene II

Runaway

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You are sitting on a sofa. The figure next to you is female. You can't make out her features, minus the fact that she is plain, not any one extreme or the other, any opposite, yet her soul is warm, she is your friend. Her face is obscured and you know it yet can't see it, her rich dark hair, the colour of energy chocolate the only visible feature.

You go unnoticed by all but her. Are you imagined by her, a friend to comfort her in the dark or do you not warrant the attention of the man who stands before her?

He is darkness. His rage and anger, his innate cruelty wash over you like a breeze; they flow from him like breath. Nasty and a tyrant, he brings pain. You do not know him. His is nothing to you as you are nothing to him, yet his words, unheard in your ears, and his anger break upon this girl, this woman, like a hammer against an anvil.

She is broken.

Then he is gone.

She moves from the sofa, beckoning you to follow. You do, unsure of how you know her and why you are unseen. Fear of the unknown from you, fear of the known from her.

Through a door. She sits upon a bed, near its head and you perch near the foot. No tears from her, yet the pain and anguish she feels makes your heart crack and waver.

Resolve, there, a bag, large and with clothing. She means to leave, escape from this individual, this cancer of a human who has broken her in mind, emotion and body, taking all she held dear from her.

You know this and you will aid her.

The man is gone, not here, away. The door opens before her as she walks, the real world offering her succour from the torment of her life. You follow, insubstantial as you are; yet you carry her belongings, her anchor to better times, over your shoulder.

And through the door is a plain, cookie cut suburbia. Plain, white kitset houses, a cul-de-sac.

Yet the door slams shut and the mirror on the back cracks down its length. The woman with you can be clearly seen in its fragmented glass. You, red haired, beautiful and full of fire see that over your shoulder stands yourself, devoid of flame, drawn, empty. Broken.

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Dream Scene III

Icicle

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She can see through the trees towards the lights that hang in the sky. The apex a bright globe, the lines of smaller lights off at each compass point. She know the vessel; it's from a movie, a television show, a book, something, a mix of that and others. It inspires fear here and now where, originally, there was none.

She turns to her companions, two men. The revelation that she isn't herself but someone else slowly comes to her mind yet time cannot be given to this, for the fear is gaining, building inexorably, blocking out all but the rising terror.

Your companion's panic; screaming that they too can see the fell lights through the overhanging boughs of the trees.

You are here and you need to run from the sky sphere.

Run you do, legs pumping, you as the point of the arrowhead, centre, your friends, comrades, fellows on either side of you. You run mindless, blind in panic and fear.

Disjointed you float free, you body ploughing along, companions on either side of your, yet you see from above, a disembodied panning shot, theatrical camera angle imitation, like you are somehow attached to a bungee cord and being ripped backwards and out, like a rubber band let loose.

The roughly churned dirt track is almost the width of a single lane road, the thick canopy covering its span, hiding you from the menace that follows.

The track moves upward and the running doesn't stop. From your vantage point outside your body you see a fork in the road, one continues veering slightly to the left, the other seems to double back. Odd that you can see through the canopy from above, yet the pursuer cannot.

A silent scream as you urge you body to move down the left veering path yet you are pulled back into your frame as they turn down the right, backtracking.

Running in your body, no outside view, the end, dead end, comes up before you. Chests, boxes and books lie scattered, a single sentence, not written or read but subliminal comes across your mind.

The knowledge that is the sum of humanity.

And then you float free…

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Author's Notes

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Talk about a trip. This fiction was actually an original piece a long time back (13th January 2001) that I'd written based on a series of dreams I had over the course of a week. I never had any direct understanding of the second two scenes (originally titled Runaway and Ice From The Sky) but the first (originally titled Laughter) still speaks to me now. The latter two were originally added as they proved interesting reading but over time just made no sense. Please forgive any ambiguity, I originally tried to convey what I felt as I dreamed, which is trying to cast my mind back seven years and not easy to do in an updated authors note. I also stated in the original Authors Notes that "reading into these too much won't do much good, base impressions are what I hit upon during sleep and I have simply tried to convey that here."

Well that's said seven years later and they still made no sense. But as I reread them it struck that they fit into a fandom quite comfortably. Shinji with his father issues (and Instrumentality anxiety), Asuka with her self conflict and Rei rather than being the cold white light in the sky, experiencing Instrumentality first hand. Take it further and imagine it's in the Instrumentality universe Shinji dreams at the end of the series. Cool. As no one is likely to read all this its fair to say that you can draw your own conclusion as that's what fanfiction is about, telling stories that conclude the way we've drawn them. Talk about not making sense.

Originally written and compiled 13th January 2001.

Evangelionised 7th July 2008.

By Nicholas Clark (Warriorsong)

Oh and sorry if the tense is all messed up. I don't get my stuff beta'ed so…


End file.
